Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 20, 2025
The yearly revenue was fixed at one million three hundred thousand pounds, of which no part was to be raised by a land-tax; and of this sum one million was devoted to the support of the army and navy, and three hundred thousand pounds to the expenses of the civil list; but, on the remonstrance of the protector, that with so small a revenue it would be impossible to continue the war, an additional grant of six hundred thousand pounds was voted for the three following years.
A fixed land-tax to be paid to Rome was imposed on each community; and they were all subordinated to the governor of Macedonia in such a manner that the latter, as supreme military chief, exercised a superintendence over administration and justice, and could, for example, personally assume the decision of the more important criminal processes.
The directions specified in the former act for levying this imposition having been found inconvenient in many respects, new regulations were now established, importing, that those deductions should be paid into the hands of receivers appointed by the king for that purpose; that all sums deducted under this act should be accounted for to such receivers, and the accounts audited and passed by them, and not by the auditors of the impress, or of the exchequer: that all disputes relating to the collection of this duty should be finally, and in a summary way, determined by the barons of the exchequer in England and Scotland respectively: that the commissioners of the land-tax should fix and ascertain the sum total or amount of the perquisites of every office and employment within their respective districts, distinct from the salary thereunto belonging, to be deducted under the said act, independently of any former valuation or assessment of the same to the land-tax; and should rate or assess all offices and employments, the perquisites whereof should be found to exceed the sum of one hundred pounds per annum, at one shilling for every twenty thence arising; that the receivers should transmit to the commissioners in every district where any office or employment is to be assessed, an account of such officers and employments, that, upon being certified of the truth of their amount, they might be rated and assessed accordingly; that in all future assessments of the land-tax, the said offices and employments should not be valued at higher rates than those at which they were assessed towards the land-tax of the thirty-first year of the present reign; that the word perquisite should be understood to mean such profits of offices and employments as arise from fees established by custom or authority, and payable either by the crown or the subjects, in consideration of business done in the course of executing such offices and employments; and that a commissioner possessed of any office or employment, might not interfere in the execution of the said act, except in what might relate to his own employment.
The expense of levying a land-tax, which varied with every variation of the rent, would, no doubt, be somewhat greater than that of levying one which was always rated according to a fixed valuation.
They granted two hundred and thirty thousand nine hundred and twenty-three pounds, for the maintenance of twelve thousand Hessian troops; a subsidy of fifty thousand pounds to the king of Sweden; and half that sum to the duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle.* The expense of the year amounted to four millions, raised by a land-tax of three shillings in the pound, a malt-tax, and by borrowing of the bank one million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, for which annuities to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, to be raised by duties on coals imported into the city of London, were granted to that corporation.
Non-payment of taxes is another of the weapons which "Non-co-operation" has threatened to use, and it includes non-payment of the land-tax which would directly incite the whole agricultural population to lawlessness, and an attack upon excise revenue which in the shape of a temperance movement, in itself perfectly commendable, has already led to many cases of indefensible violence, chiefly in the urban industrial centres.
"These men," says our author, "knew the country, its capabilities, its average yield, and its average requirements, with an accuracy that the most painstaking English official can seldom hope to attain to. They had a strong interest in representing things to be worse than they were; for the more intense the scarcity, the greater the merit in collecting the land-tax.
The inhabitants of those parishes which had been ravaged by fire were to be exempt from land-tax for three years; and in no parish were the inhabitants to be taunted with the past, nor molested on the subject of religion, but were to be free to worship God in their own houses according to their consciences."
They suggested that the land-tax was raised at a very small expense, and subject to no fraud, whereas that upon salt would employ a great number of additional officers in the revenue, wholly depending upon the ministry, whose influence in elections they would proportionably increase.
To raise a ransom which freed the land from the invader, the first land-tax, under the name of the Danegeld, was laid on every hide of ground; and to this national taxation the Norman kings added the feudal burthens of the new military estates created by the Conquest, reliefs paid on inheritance, profits of marriages and wardship, and the three feudal aids.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking